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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#291

Post by laserlight »

jwells89 wrote: post #128
1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

At home, the benefits are extreme. Full office, private bath, private bed, private kitchen, garaged parking, asset security, and a 30 second commute. The next wave of office workers will want it better than this, or it simply won't work.

Also, schedule flexibility. If I hit a point where my brain is a smoldering pile of ash I can get up and go do chores or get some sun by checking the mail or something, instead of sitting at my desk staring at my screen praying to the gods of productivity that my brain will start functioning again.

So much this. Doing chores is a great way to have a break: physically engaging and functional.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#293

Post by steveBK123 »

nequo wrote: post #239
steveBK123 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. Each step is just a small increment worse. But when you go fro…

In what way is transit worse in NYC and DC? Are trains and buses running on a sparser schedule today in these two cities than they were before COVID?

Well DC I know they had some serious train defects that took trains/lines out of service for repairs for some time and caused capacity reductions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/met...

NYC they are running fewer trains so even if overall ridership is down, the trains are as crowded or more crowded than ever. Further in NYC due to homeless/migrant population growth falling through the cracks, the subway ends up being the shelter of last resort. Finally violent crime on the subway increased substantially over covid, and while down is still not at 2019 levels. So while waiting longer for a train, you are more likely to be dealing with a general sense of crime/disorder/etc.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#294

Post by steveBK123 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #276
steveBK123 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. Each step is just a small increment worse. But when you go fro…

> Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. I found this to be a depressing quality of life trajectory m…

Yup. The few that stayed in the city were funded in one way or another..

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#295

Post by rqtwteye »

Roark66 wrote: post #244
steveBK123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…

>My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office. Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got tha…

" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office."

People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#296

Post by ljf »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #174
yungporko wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, i don't care if they give me an entire palace. unless it's attached to my home, i am not going there. if my job requires me to be at the office, i will say "no" and then get another job.

> unless it's attached to my home, i am not going there Why on Earth would you accept an office attached to your home?! Seems like the worst of all options...

Before covid - we built a shed/bar/office/playroom that I thought I'd get to work in 1 day a week, which is what felt acceptable for whf at the time.

During covid having a place I can shut the door on at the end of the day, was amazing. I watched friends work from kitchen tables, while I had my own office in the garden.

For a while it did 'spoil' it as a playroom/fun room - but I pretty quickly learnt to make it work for me.

Having an office attached to your house is amazing (and is the largest drag for me returning to the office).

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#297

Post by heavyset_go »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #109

> If you want to watch your employees work, build glass walls I'm not sure if the author is serious or trolling. Looking forward to another series of articles "I gave them glass offices, why won't they come back in?!"

"Why Gen Z/Millennials Ruined Glass Walls"

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#298

Post by rqtwteye »

peatmoss wrote: post #201
AvAn12 wrote: post #9

Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past: "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who needed to work intensively on a project would work from home instead of in the office.

To me it beggars belief that companies spend so much on humans only to put them in an environment where it’s impossible to concentrate. I reckon at some point someone will figure out that the physical environment can be modified to make knowledge workers more productive, and start walloping their competition. I am on a distributed team with no in-person interaction, and I love commuting even though I don’t see anyone…

"To me it beggars belief that companies spend so much on humans only to put them in an environment where it’s impossible to concentrate."

But "collaboration"....

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#299

Post by patmorgan23 »

rayiner wrote: post #179
steveBK123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…

> My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. That’s not populist at all. It’s just another example of the white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while everyone else gets left behind: https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa... . Before the pandem…

There are millions of people who work lower wage office jobs in call centers or other clerical jobs that benefited greatly from work from home. That's pretty populist.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#300

Post by adolph »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #204
Veliladon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no excess labor left in the system. We just went through a pandemic where, in the US, 2.4 million people just vanished from the labor force. If there is a recession it'll be a fully employed recession where the fed has to keep rates high because workers are fully employed and driving up wages while capital is crying uncle for lost profits and cheap money again.

I predict automation/outsourcing will keep whittling away the need for work from home computer based jobs. The labor demand will be for the in person jobs that require physical labor.

Predicting reduced need for labor due to "automation" has been a losing bet since the Luddites. Do the tasks change? Yes. Is more and different work enabled? Yes.

Likewise "outsourcing" could result in a net increase of WFH given that contracting companies already support it.

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